Help/Advice on my UV Map
You're absolutely right for GEs you want to keep the seam count als low as possible
It's a bit hard to tell from that angle, but 

The one with the arrow, you can definetly remove. The one with the circle, I guess there you can save yourself some seams. Just think of the jpg as a piece of paper, if it's possible to cut and then wrap the paper around your model, there will be little to none distortion. That means all the vertical ones along the cylinder are crucial.